these two latter periods; only they made them the two moieties of the last week of the seventy, while I suppose them to be emblems of the last half-week. 341. In reading the history of the pretended Christ, Bar-Cochab, and of the awful judgment which came through him upon the seed of Abraham, we can hardly fail to recognise in this blasphemous impostor, the most conspicuous manifestation of Antichrist ever yet exhibited in the person of an individual Jew. In the earlier crisis, or first act of the Roman judgment, we seem to see the whole people of the Jews set forth in the character of an Antichrist. Amid the portentous wickedness of those tremendous times, we do indeed discern in one or another individual an awful pre-eminence in the deeds of Antichrist-more especially in that "furious beast," as Josephus calls him, Simon the son of Gioras: but this man did not pretend to be the Christ, nor was received as such: in him we see a "murderer" such as the Jews "desired to be given unto them:" but Bar-Cochab declared himself to be the Messiah, was acknowledged as such by his infatuated nation, and did all the works of Antichrist, so far as the Providence of God at that time permitted. Trajan, it is well known, persecuted not only the Christian Church but the Jews. His acts against the latter assumed, for whatever reason, a character of greater animosity about the year 108. When, at last, a decree was issued which forbade the further use of circumcision, the Jews in various parts of the empire began to revolt. In Cyprus, Cyrene, and other places, they put to death many thousands of Greeks, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the legions from these places about A. D. 115, at the beginning of the second Parthian expedition. At this time we find the celebrated Rabbi Akiba preaching the near advent of Messiah, stirring up revolt in Mesopotamia, and finally declaring that Messiah was come in the person of one Simon, who, applying to himself the prophecy of Balaam, called himself Bar-Cochab, "son of the star." This was before Trajan's death in 118. 2 Dion. Cass. lxviii. 32. lxix. 12-14. Euseb. H. E. iv. 2. 6. Spartian, Hadrianus. Münter der Jüd. Krieg unter den Kaisern Trajan und Hadrian. After the return of Hadrian Greswell, Dissertations, iv. 98. Milman, History of the Jews. Jost, Geschichte d. Israeliten, iii. 181. from the East in A. D. 130, the rebellion broke out in earnest. The pretensions of Simon, urged by "the great and wise Rabbi Akiba" (as Maimonides styles him), and attested by "lying wonders" which he is said to have wrought-for "he breathed flames from his mouth to the terror of his enemies and the unbounded confidence of his followers”—rapidly gained adherents who flocked to his standard. They fortified the mountain fastnesses, gathered arms, and harassed the Romans with a predatory warfare, and cruelly persecuted the Christians who refused to join them. (S. Justin Mart. Apol. pr. 32). Bar-Cochab took Jerusalem about A.D. 132. He issued coins having on one side his own name, on the other "Freedom of Jerusalem." He intended to rebuild the Temple, or, as some say, made a beginning of the work. Fifty fortified places and 985 villages were presently in the hands of the insurgents. Hadrian now committed the war to Julius Severus, the ablest of his generals. Jerusalem was taken and destroyed: a ploughshare was driven over its soil. The Jews gathered their forces in the mountain-fortress of Bethar or Bitter, near Jerusalem; and here Simon still maintained his regal pretensions about three years. Bethar was taken, and an end put to the life of Simon and to the war, on the 9th day of Ab, the precise anniversary of the burning of the Temple, exactly 65 years after that crisis, A. D. 135. The rebellion, or reign of Simon, say the Jews, had lasted precisely 3 years. Dion Cassius relates that in this war 580,000 Jews fell by the sword, besides untold multitudes who died by famine, disease, or fire. The Rabbins, unconsciously adopting the terrific language of the Apocalypse, relate that the horses waded up to their bits in human carnage. The dead covered 18 square miles; the inhabitants of the adjacent region had no need to manure their land for seven years. "The whole of Judæa was a desert, wolves and hyænas went howling through the streets of the desolate cities. Those who escaped the sword were scarcely more fortunate. They were reduced to slavery by thousands. There was a great fair held under the Terebinth, beneath which Abraham, it was believed, had pitched his tent. Thither his miserable children were brought in droves, and sold as cheap as slaves. Others were carried away and sold at Gaza; others were transported to Egypt." (Milman's History of the Jews.) Surely this whole history is, as I have said, a manifest rehearsal of the times of Antichrist. Bar-Cochab and his prophet are no obscure types of the Beast' and the False Prophet of the Apocalypse. The 3 years, and the fatal 9th Ab3, occurring at so awful a crisis, are significant intimations of the kind with which we are concerned, that the catastrophe is in some sense the end of an aiwv or sacred period. This crisis in its historical details-in respect of the attempted prohibition of circumcision, and the final expatriation of the Jews from the Promised Land, stands in the same relation to the Abrahamic as the crisis of the Temple to the Levitical Covenant. (Supra § 331.) I have now explained what I take to be the principal sense of this wondrous prophecy. But it has other bearings, which we will attempt to define in the succeeding chapters. Perhaps the fatal number, Rev. xiii. 18, may consist in the formula Simon Stelle) שמעון בן כוכב מלכי Filius Rex meus) or "(Rex Israel) considered as the badge or watch-word of his followers. 2 "On the 9th Ab the decree came out against Israel in the wilderness, that they should not enter into the land: on it was the destruction of the first Temple, and on it was the destruction of the second. On it the great city Bitter was taken, where there were thousands and ten-thousands of Israel who had a great king over them [Ben Coziba] whom all Israel, even their greatest wise men, thought to have been Messias: but he fell into the hands of the heathen, and there was great affliction as there was at the destruction of the sanctuary. And on that day, a day allotted for vengeance, the wicked Turnus Rufus ploughed up the place of the Temple, and the places about it, to accomplish what is said, Zion shall become a ploughed field.'" Talmud in Taanith. Lightfoot, The Fall of Jerusalem, Works, Vol. 1. 362. To which we may add, that on this same day Noah opened the windows of the Ark, and sent forth the raven and the dove, p. 326. CHAPTER III. OTHER MORE PRECISE AND MORE RECONDITE ECONOMIES I HAVE now to describe some cycles and parallelisms of a very exact nature, hinging upon the dates which we determined in our historical investigation, but so recondite, that prior to actual calculation no one could have even surmised their existence. I will not attempt to describe the sense of awful surprise which attended the discovery, as, one after another, the facts rose before me. At the head of this series I place two facts involved in the dates here assigned to the Exodus, the Nativity, and the Passion, in connexion with the well-known date of the Conflagration of the Temple. I will only request my reader, in the first place, to refresh his recollection of the process by which those three dates were obtained, that there may be no suspicion of a preconceived intention, or unconscious collusion between the understanding and the fancy. I. The Fulness of Time: The Year of Jubile. § 342. "In the fulness of time" Christ was born of the Virgin: when "His hour was come" He died on the cross. The precise year of His Passion was predetermined in Daniel's prophecy the precise day, in the type of the Paschal Lamb. Was the fulness of time for His Nativity prescribed by any analogy discoverable by us? From the slaying of the first paschal lamb, in Egypt, to the fulfilment for ever of that great type in the slaying of the Lamb of God, are, in our Chronology, 1614 Jewish years: (B. C. 1586, A. d. 29.) The very day and hour of each event, being paschal dates, are had by lunar calculation, from the data of the respective years. The first is the 10th April, the other, 18th March. The interval therefore is 1614 Julian years 1 minus 23 days, or 589,491 days'. Again, our approximate date of the Nativity was 8th December, B. c. 5. In virtue of our elements, this date is, in all probability, true within a day or two either way. From 8th December, B. c. 5 to 18th March, A. D. 28, are 32 Julian years, plus 100 days, or 11,788 days. It occurred to me, in the course of reflection on which I had entered, to enquire, whether these two periods stand in any marked numerical relation to each other. They do, and in such a relation, that one more significant and impressive can hardly be conceived. 91 Divide the number 589,491 by 11,788: the one contains the other fifty times, with only the small fraction 11,788 Suppose the relation to be exact: the larger number divided by 50 gives the quotient 11,789 days, with a fraction 0.82, equivalent to 19 hours and a half. This term of days and hours measured back from the hour of our Lord's death, reaches to the 7th December, B. c. 5, about 5 hours before midnight. A marvellous coincidence! Think of the manifest spiritual import of the JUBILE, or fiftieth year; and then observe that the time during which it pleased the Son of God to sojourn among us, when He brought liberty for the captives with forgiveness of debts and restoration of the alienated inheritance-was this Jubile of the times of Israel, from the hour of the first Passover to "His hour" when "fully come." II. "Supremus Dies." § 343. When Messiah was cut off, a final period of pro"The wrath came upon them to the utter bation ensued. == By direct calculation: 1614 Julian years 403 x 1461 days plus 2 years, one of which (a. D. 28, is bissextile). Therefore, But the trouble, such as it is, of calculation may be partly saved by use of the Tables appended to the Institutes of Chronology. |